December 2007
Sunday, December 2, 2007
“Struggle of a Saved Soul”
"Run, run and do," the Law commands,
But gives me neither feet nor hands.
Better news the gospel brings,
It bids me fly and gives me wings.
–Author unknown
Monday, December 3, 2007
Romans 7:1-6
“Dr. Alexander Whyte once said that whenever a new book on Romans comes out and is sent to him for consideration, he at once turns to the comments on chapter seven, and according to the view taken of that important section he decides on the value of the entire work”
–Dr. Griffith Thomas
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Romans 8:6-17
“To hope to do better is to fail to see yourself in Christ only.”
“To be disappointed with yourself means you believed in yourself.”
“To be discouraged is unbelief.”
“To be proud is to be blind.”
“The lack of divine blessing comes from unbelief, not a failure of devotion.”
–Dr. William R. Newell
“If we could see ourselves as God sees us, we couldn’t even stand ourselves!”
–attributed to Mel Trotter
Friday, December 7, 2007
Romans 8:18-28
“A soft pillow for a tired heart.”
–Dr. Rueben A. Torrey describing Romans 8:28
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Romans 9:1-5
“It has been tacitly assumed in Christian interpretation that Judaism’s day is over; that an elect, leveling church built on faith in Christ was the intent of the Law and prophets; and that it was the duty of all Jews to drop their peculiarities and come into the church. Such an assumption the Jews ascribed to Paul. It is strangely forgotten that the mother church in Jerusalem and Judaea never had a Gentile within its fold, that none could have been admitted, and that every member of that primitive body of tens of thousands was zealous of the law (Acts 21:20). They accepted Jesus as the Messiah, but abandoned none of their Old Testament customs and hopes. Christianity has suffered not a little in the continuous attempt to interpret it not from the Jewish, but from the Gentile point of view. The church in Jerusalem, and not the church in Antioch or Ephesus or Rome, furnishes the only sufficient historical outlook.”
–James M. Stifler, The Epistle to the Romans
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Romans 9:4-24
Presumptuous Pigmy
You cannot put one little star in motion,
You cannot shape one single forest leaf,
Nor fling a mountain up, nor sink an ocean,
Presumptuous pigmy, large with unbelief!
You cannot bring one dawn of regal splendor,
Nor bid the day to shadowy twilight fall,
Nor send the pale moon forth with radiance tender;
And dare you doubt the One who has done it all?
–Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“I am having trouble with that passage too, but mine is different. I do not understand why God loved Jacob.”
–Dr. Griffith Thomas’ answer to a student who was having trouble understanding why God hated Esau
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Romans 9:25—10:6
“Is it not marvelous that people can read the Bible and all the time fail to see its essential teaching and its personal application to themselves? There is scarcely anything more surprising and saddening than the presence of intellectual knowledge of God’s word with an utter failure to appreciate its spiritual meaning and force.”
–Dr. Griffith Thomas
November 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
2 Kings 20
"One thing I have discovered in the last few days. When a Christian is suddenly confronted with the sentence of death, he surely begins to give a proper evaluation of material things: my fishing gear, and books, and orchard are not nearly so valuable as they were a week ago."
–Excerpt from a letter from Dr. McGee's friend after having been diagnosed with terminal cancer
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Romans 2:21–3:9
You're writing a gospel, a chapter a day
By deeds that you do and words that you say.
Men read what you write, whether false or true.
What is the gospel according to you?
–Author unknown
"If circumcision in itself does not give righteousness, if circumcision does not preclude it, what profit was there ever in it? A distinction that God made among men seems, after all, not to be one."
–Dr. James Stifler
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Romans 5:1-9
"In Washington there is a feeling that the problems have so mounted and multiplied that man is totally incapable of solving the problems of the world."
–James Reston, New York Times
"You are looking at an atheist who has lost his faith."
–George Bernard Shaw
October 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
2 Samuel 21–23
"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers and it was not there. In the fertile fields and the boundless prairies and it was not there. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secrets of her genius and power. America is great because she is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
–Attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville
Thursday, October 11, 2007
1 Kings 8:44–10:22
"The soul is on its knees many times, regardless of the posture of the body."
–Attributed to Victor Hugo
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
1 Kings 16:30–18:17
"God creates out of nothing. Until a man recognizes that he is nothing, God can do nothing with him."
–Martin Luther
Thursday, October 18, 2007
1 Kings 18:17-46
"One with God is a majority."
–Martin Luther
Friday, October 26, 2007
2 Kings 6
"Madam, can you mention anything in your life that's big to God?"
–Dr. G. Campbell Morgan's response when asked, "Do you think we should pray about the little things in our lives?"
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
2 Kings 11 & 12
"I cannot see anywhere in Scripture that revival of the true church is contrary to the will of God."
–Dr. Griffith Thomas
"There is no such teaching in Scripture that revival is contrary to the will of God."
–Dr. R.A. Torrey
"We recall nothing in the epistles justifying the conclusion that the experiences of the early church may not be repeated today."
–Dr. James M. Gray
September 2007
Monday, September 3, 2007
1 Samuel 15
"What I try to do is to hold a mirror to nature, and I do not find knights in shining armor riding up to castles to deliver Lady Guinevere from the tower in the castle. I hold the mirror up to nature."
–William Thackeray, when asked why he didn't have great heroes or heroines in his novels
"I do not know what the heart of a villain is. I only know the heart of a righteous man."
–Count de Maistre
"Every man knows that of himself that he dare not tell his closest friend."
–Johann W. von Goethe
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
1 Samuel 16, 17
"One with God is a majority."
–Martin Luther
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
1 Samuel 27, 28
"In spite of the large amount of fraud, fake, deceit, and thought-reading, conscious or unconscious, that the investigator of psychic research has to contend with, there remains a nucleus of genuine matter that cannot be explained with our present knowledge except by accepting the hypothesis that human personalities exist through death, and that certain persons have the power and gift of contacting them. Churches have nothing to fear from genuine psychic phenomena."
–The Guardian, publication of the Church of England, 1947
The Witch of Endor
The road to Endor is easy to tread
for mother or yearning wife.
There it is sure we shall meet our dead
as they were even in life.
Earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store
for the desolate hearts on the road to Endor.
Whispers shall comfort us out of the dark
hand of God that we know.
Visions and voices look and hark
shall prove that our tale is true.
And to those that have passed to the further shore
may be hailed at a price on the road to Endor.
Oh, the road ot Endor is the oldest road
and the craziest road of all.
Straight it runs to the witches abode
as it did in the days of Saul.
And nothing has changed of the sorrow in store,
for such as go down to the road to Endor.
–Rudyard Kipling
August 2007
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Acts 15:40–16:40
"Go west, young man, go west."
–Horace Greely
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Acts 25:22–26:4
"When I was a young man I heard Henry Barley say that the world has yet to see what God can do for a man fully yielded to Him, and I said I wanted to be that man. But I can say today the world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully yielded to Him"
–Dwight L. Moody
Monday, August 20, 2007
Acts 26:29–27:13
"The mark of a great statesman is a man who knows the way God is going for the next 50 years."
–William Gladstone
Monday, August 27, 2007
1 Samuel 3–5
Harden Not Your Heart
There is a time, I know not when,
A place, I know not where,
Which marks the destiny of men
To heaven or despair.
There is a line by us not seen
Which crosses every path,
The hidden boundary between
God's patience and His wrath.
To cross that limit is to die,
To die, as if by stealth.
It may not pale the beaming eye,
Nor quench the glowing health.
The conscience may be still at ease,
The spirits light and gay;
That which is pleasing still may please,
And care be thrust away.
But on that forehead God hath set
Indelibly a mark,
By man unseen, for man as yet
Is blind and in the dark.
And still the doomed man's path below
May bloom like Eden bloomed.
He did not, does not, will not know,
Nor feel that he is doomed.
He feels, he sees that all is well,
His every fear is calmed.
He lives, he dies, he wakes in hell,
Not only doomed, but damned.
Oh, where is that mysterious bourn,
By which each path is crossed,
Beyond which God himself hath sworn
That he who goes is lost?
How long may men go on in sin?
How long will God forbear?
Where does hope end, and where begin
The confines of despair?
One answer from those skies is sent,
"Ye who from God depart,
While it is called today, repent,
And harden not your heart."
–Author unknown
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
1 Samuel 6:1–8:22
"Romans 8:28 is a soft pillow for a tired heart."
–Dr. R.A. Torrey
Thursday, August 30, 2007
1 Samuel 11:1–12:25
"One with God is a majority."
–Martin Luther
July 2007
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Acts 1:1-3
and
Monday, July 9, 2007
Acts 1:26–2:13
"Always put the cookies on the bottom shelf so the kiddos can get them."
–Dr. Harry Ironside
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Acts 4:1-37
"We are called to fish in the fish pond, not to clean up the fish pond."
–Dr. Bob Shuler
June 2007
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Joshua 19, 20
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said,
To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
–George Keith
Monday, June 11, 2007
Judges 1:1–3:11
"In this day of gathering storms, as moral deterioration of political power spreads its growing infection, it is essential that every spiritual force be mobilized to defend and preserve the religious base which has been the motivating impulse to our moral and national growth. History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual re-awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster."
–General Douglas MacArthur
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Judges 11:8-40
The Song of the Sowers
We often sing the reaper's song
For joy in harvesting is found,
But I would sing the sower's praise–
'Tis he who tills the fallow ground.
You may have planted seeds of grace
In some unyielding, rugged earth,
Yet never see the ripening grain–
But He records the sower's worth.
Keep spreading wide His blessed Word
Where'er the Savior's will shall lead,
For reapers stand with empty hands
Without the one who sows the seed.
Oh bless the gospel sower, Lord,
And may Thy people come to know
There'd be no harvest of lost souls
Without the faithful ones who sow.
–By Marion Rollins Guptill, a listener to Thru the Bible Radio
May 2007
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Deuteronomy 8:1–9:6
"One with God is a majority."
–Martin Luther
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Deuteronomy 31:24–34:12
The Burial of Moses (last two stanzas)
By Nebo's lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave
And no man knows that sepulcher,
And no man saw it e'er,
For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.
–Cecil Frances Alexander
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Joshua 7:1–8:2
"People have just enough religion to make them miserable."
–Dwight L. Moody
April 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
John 16:8-28
They were looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high;
Thou cam'st, a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.
–George McDonald
Monday, April 16, 2007
John 17:2-26
"If the Lord had put a yellow stripe down the backs of the elect, I'd go up and down the street lifting up shirt tails, finding out who had the yellow stripe, and then I'd give them the gospel. But God didn't do it that way. He told me to preach the gospel to every creature that 'whosoever will may come.'"
–Charles Spurgeon
"It is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee. It is Christ. It is not thy faith in Christ, though that be the instrument. It is Christ's blood and merit."
–Charles Spurgeon
January 2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Luke 12
I had a little tea party
This afternoon at three.
'Twas very small, three guests in all,
Just I, Myself and Me.
Myself ate all the sandwiches,
While I drank up the tea.
'Twas also I who ate the pie
And passed the cake to Me.
–Author unknown
"Fear God and you will have no one else to fear."
–Oliver Cromwell
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